


The Shrine and the Spirit

by minarenny



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Spirits, Curses, Edo Period, I Fudged Very Little, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Kitsune, M/M, Magic, Spirits, Zuko's Scar (Avatar), so much research went into this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25796833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minarenny/pseuds/minarenny
Summary: “You’re a kitsune,” Sokka says dumbly. “One of Inari’s fox spirits.”The spirit snarls at his words. “I am, and you are intruding. Leave, before you burn like the previous soul who entered my shrine.” He holds his hand out—his nails are sharp—and a fire lights above his palm. There is nothing to feed it, but Sokka can feel the heat. The fire is surely real.Or: Sokka stumbles upon an abandoned shrine, and he discovers the world of spirits.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 165





	1. The Abandoned Shrine

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, I've settled into the realization that this might be a relatively long one. I've written almost three chapters already, and I plan to update around every other week. This is very loosely based in the Edo period; perhaps it draws a few things from just a bit before.
> 
> Either way, as soon as I came up with the idea for kitsune Zuko, I knew that I absolutely had to write it. Please enjoy!
> 
> I post wips and writing updates almost daily on my twitter, [teaszuko](https://twitter.com/teaszuko), so please feel free to follow me and reach out to me there! I love talking about this au.

The woods are treacherous.

This is the first thing that every young member of the village is taught; it is the mantra that the hunters repeat to themselves every time they go out for food, and it is the warning given to children that are prone to wandering. Their village has never been lucky, and people who go too far into the depths of the trees without having learned the safe paths often don’t return.

Although the village is located near clear waters, a lake that allows for fishing to sustain the small population, the village has never been able to successfully grow past its size of a few hundred residents. Their rice farms are almost impossible to maintain, and they barely have enough to support the people who already live in their settlement. They can’t support more.

Most of the elders say it is the work of spirits; that evil souls haunt the forest of Uchiura that surrounds them, that their forefathers angered them in a way that cannot be paid off without suffering for several generations.

Supposedly many more people lived in this area in the past. Supposedly, a dozen generations ago, the village was a wealthy town, before tragedy hit and drove out all but the most stubborn of families.

Whether spirits are truly angry at the villagers that remain in the lands of their forefathers or not, it is still true that no one should go into the forest without knowing the right paths to follow; the safe places to walk. Straying from the path is a sure way to invite trouble from the wilds.

Sokka has never claimed to do anything that he _should_.

In his defense, he had run into a fox kit. The den was only a few feet off the path, and when he had seen it, he had made the mistake of poking around the interesting hole in the ground to see what was inside. He had realized his error as soon as he had seen gleaming eyes staring at him out of the darkness. He wasn’t going to hurt it; there was no reason to attack a baby animal that had no defense and no meat on his bones. There was no honor in a kill like that. However, the fox kit’s mother had no way to know that he didn’t mean harm.

It doesn’t take more than a growl from the angry mother for Sokka to immediately turn tail and run. He can hear yips from the mother behind him, the pad of paws through the trees that she knows far better than he does. He won’t be able to outrun her. He can only hope that he can run far enough for her to lose interest and return to her baby.

He really doesn’t want to have to fight the fox mother. Mothers of all species are vicious, and he doesn’t want to have to kill the mother of a kit and sentence two creatures to death.

So he runs until he’s out of breath, until he can no longer hear pounding paws behind him and he can lean against the trunk of a tree and focus on getting rid of the horrible stitch in his side, the burn in his lungs and the cough in his throat. When he finally feels like he’s not going to keel over from lack of oxygen, he straightens up and looks around.

It is at this point that he realizes that he has no idea where he is.

In his desperate hurry to get away from the fox mother, he hadn’t paid attention to the direction he was running. By all accounts, he shouldn’t be too far from familiar woods, and he’s pretty sure he knows which direction to walk in order to get back to the village.

Then again, hadn’t he made a few turns in his mad dash? He’s not entirely sure.

He should be better at finding his way. When he’s in familiar territory, he is incredibly talented at making his way around. It’s when he doesn’t know where he is that he has a problem, since his directional sense is absolutely terrible.

It’s midday. He’ll have to wait until the sun starts to set to discover which direction he should walk, when he can tell which way is north again.

His sister is going to chew him out so hard for getting lost. He can imagine her yelling now.

Maybe it would be better to see if he can find a section of woods that he knows before he sits down and gives up for a few hours. If he can get back in time, maybe Katara will forgive the fact that he hasn’t gotten any meat for their dinner. They’ll be forced to eat rice again.

Sokka looks around him. Every direction really does look exactly the same; trees, trees, and more trees as far as the eye can see. It doesn’t matter which direction he walks. He’ll pick one at random and hope it leads him out. If he walks for a while and he’s still lost, _then_ he’ll sit tight until he can figure out the sun’s movement.

He turns towards his best guess at ‘back the way he came’ and starts walking.

As he walks, he tries not to think about all of the stories he’s heard from the village elders of people who have wandered into the forbidden parts of the forest. He tries to focus on thoughts of what he’ll do to get back on Katara’s good side when he gets back to the village, which of the chores he hates to do that he’ll take on in order to keep her from yelling at him _too_ much. He forces himself to ignore the thought that it might be _if_ he gets back to the village.

The trees around him are still unfamiliar; the shadows they cast feel menacing rather than like a shelter. They’re thicker than in the areas he often hunts in, oppressive and hard to push through. Had he really run so far?

Sokka is beginning to suspect that he is walking the wrong way when the trees suddenly open up to a small clearing. Light filters through the leaves more easily here, dappling the overgrown grass and thick vines that wrap around old, peeling _torii_ gates.

They had been a bright vermillion at one point in time, but the paint is peeling now, dulled by the elements and time. Vines wrap around the softened wood, and Sokka winces at the way they have clearly been neglected.

There are eroded fox statues on either side of the gates that are almost entirely obscured by undergrowth and weeds. Only their heads can be seen; the rest of them have been claimed by nature. A shrine to Inari, Sokka realizes.

It’s an abandoned one. The path leaving up to the _haiden_ is so overgrown that it practically doesn’t exist anymore; he can only see a few places where the stones marking the walkway were large enough so that they are visible through the plants. Several small trees have begun growing in what must have once been well-groomed grounds. It’s a wreck and it’s clear that no one has been attending to the shrine for what might have been decades.

It’s eerie to see a shrine so overgrown and obviously abandoned; Sokka wonders what must have happened to cause it to be forgotten like this. Despite the odd air permeating the grounds, he bows towards the gates before walking through them, picking his way through the undergrowth that pulls at his pant legs.

The whole place is falling apart. It must have been a grand shrine at some point in time; the sanctuary was bigger than any of the small shrines nearer to his small village. The walls are either bowing in or warped outward due to the elements, and half of the roof is caved in. Paint is peeling, the steps are eroded, and Sokka can’t see anything of value inside, as if it was once gutted.

He frowns, hesitating just a moment before he walks up the steps, but enters the _haiden_ despite his growing unease.

It’s just as empty and run-down as the outside was. Several of the walls inside have been partially knocked in, and portions of the hall seems to be burned. It was clearly grand at one point in time, but the burnings and the elements have made it so Sokka has to watch where he steps. Several floorboards have been made uneven by plants beginning to grow between them and tear them apart.

Behind the haiden is the much smaller _honden,_ where Inari would have been enshrined. He approaches the less opulent building. Somehow, it seems to be a little bit less destroyed than the worship hall, which strikes Sokka as a bit odd. He hesitates at the entrance, wondering if going inside is the best idea. Does it still count as a sacred site if it’s been so obviously forgotten?

Perhaps there was a reason that it’s empty.

“I should just go,” Sokka mutters to himself, feeling uneasy as he begins to turn away.

“You shouldn’t have come in the first place,” a voice says, and a man steps out of the honden _._

Sokka stumbles back in shock, gasping as he realizes that the man isn’t like any man he’s ever seen before. The snarl coming from his mouth sounds inhuman, and his teeth are _sharp_ , sharp enough to leave Sokka on edge. He’s wearing a _haori_ that’s dyed in bright red with gold trim and embroidery; Sokka has never seen one like it. His _kosode_ is black, but his _hakama_ are also a deep shade of red. It’s a show of opulence and status that Sokka only sees when traveling to the rich counties to trade for extra necessities. A golden fan is tucked into his _obi_ , and his hair is tied up with a beautiful pin that probably cost more than Sokka will ever possess in his life. It’s in huge contrast to the utter poverty and desolation of the rest of the shrine.

Most notably, however, is the huge burn scar across his left eye, reducing it to nothing more than a slit—as well as the black-tipped ears on his head and the multiple tails fanning out behind the man.

Not man, Sokka realizes with a realization that, despite escaping the mother fox, he’s in more danger than he has been in through his entire life. A _spirit._

“You’re a _kitsune_ ,” Sokka says dumbly. “One of Inari’s fox spirits.”

The spirit snarls at his words. “I am, and you are intruding. Leave, before you burn like the previous soul who entered my shrine.” He holds his hand out—his nails are sharp—and a fire lights above his palm. There is nothing to feed it, but Sokka can feel the heat. The fire is surely real.

Sokka bows quickly, nodding. “Of course. Just—I don’t know the way back to my village. I only stumbled upon here as I was waiting for the setting sun to help to point me in the right direction.”

Surprisingly, his impudence doesn’t get him instantly burned alive. Instead, the spirit scowls further, but the fire goes out as he points vaguely behind Sokka, a little bit to his left. “Your village is that way. Now _leave._ ”

With a dramatic turn that makes the bright colors of his haori flash, the spirit strides back inside the honden.

Sokka takes one step backward, then two, then turns tail and runs in the direction that the spirit had pointed towards, the memory of sharp teeth and a flaming hand burned into his mind.

* * *

He runs until his lungs are burning all over again, but he forces himself not to stop until he finds himself in an area of the forest that he recognizes. He’s not more than about a twenty-minute walk away from the village. He’s amazed that such a huge, abandoned shrined could be located so close to the village—within an hour’s hike.

His mind is filled with thoughts of the kitsune as he makes his way home. How long has it been around the village? How many years has it lived? It had several tails—Sokka had seen more than three, at the very least—so that means that it’s been alive for a long time, doesn’t it?

When he arrives back at the home that he shares with his sister, however, he doesn’t say anything about what he’s seen. Instead, he resolves to talk to someone more knowledgeable about spirits than he is.

He’ll visit Aang in the morning.

As he enters their home, he sees that Katara is already finishing up with dinner. He took longer than he had meant to.

“I don’t see any meat with you,” is the first words out of her mouth.

“I didn’t catch anything,” Sokka says, resigned to her frustration. “I stumbled into a fox’s den and was chased into unfamiliar woods by the mother. I was a bit busy running for my life and trying to get out of the forest alive.”

Katara pauses from where she is scooping rice into their small wooden bowls. There’s nothing else for them to eat, not when they can’t currently afford to trade for the mackerel fished from the nearby lake. Sokka will take his own boat out soon, just to try and get themselves some. He had only gone out into the forest first because both he and Katara enjoy the darker meats, and they last so much longer than fish.

“You got lost in the forest?” she asks, looking concerned. “Why weren’t you paying attention when you ran from the fox mother? The spirits could have taken you!”

Sokka tries not to laugh at the horrible irony of her exclamation. “I wandered for a bit until I found my way back, at least? I’m sorry. I should have paid better attention.”

He sinks to the floor in front of the bowl that Katara places out for him and smiles gratefully at her. “Thank you for handling stuff around here while I’m out,” he says, deciding to change the subject. “How is the rice going?”

Katara frowns. She works with most of the other women in the rice fields, trying to desperately return them to their rumored former glory. Unfortunately, they usually barely grow enough to pay the taxes on the lands that they live on.

“It’s not raining enough,” she admits. “And our irrigation channels keep getting clogged. I’m usually good at keeping them clear, but there’s been a lot of other work lately, so I haven’t been able to pay enough attention to them. I’m kind of worried.”

“I’ll make sure that we get meat for the winter, at least,” Sokka promises. “And I’m sure we’ll meet taxes on the rice,” he adds.

“We’ll meet them,” Katara sighs. “I’m just worried about having enough for the village. We might be going hungry as often as we can this winter.”

Sokka smiles as encouragingly as he can bring himself to. “We’ll figure it out,” he says. “We always do.”

Katara nods, but she still looks slightly worried.

* * *

Aang is arguably the smartest person that Sokka has ever met, and the only monk who lives in their village. Apparently, he was once a scholar, although now he has turned to the arts in his free time. He lives mostly off of the charity of the village, and in return teaches anyone anything that he has knowledge about.

He’s a bit strange, and he’s always been kind of closed-off about his past, but Sokka likes him. Most importantly, he likely knows a lot about the different spirits, and can hopefully answer some of Sokka’s questions.

Aang invites Sokka into his small home easily, smiling as he closes the door behind Sokka and sinks down to his knees on the tatami mat flooring.

“How may I help you?” he asks.

“I have a question about kitsune _,_ and maybe some more about the history of the shrines in this area?”

Aang raises an eyebrow. “I do know quite a bit about spirits, but you might be better off asking a priest about the history of this area. I don’t know if I’ll have all of the answers.”

Sokka winces. “I just—you’re much easier to talk to than the priests,” he admits.

Aang just laughs, bright and clear, and Sokka feels a smile rise to his face in response to Aang’s amusement. “All right, then. I’ll do the best I can. What do you want to know?”

“What can you tell me about kitsune?”

“Well,” Aang starts, “there are two types of foxes. _Zenko_ , which are good spirits that serve Inari, the goddess of rice and the household—and _yako_ , the malicious foxes. Those are the ones that use their powers for evil; they destroy houses, steal from families that don’t deserve it, and ruin villages. Kitsune often have power over fire, lightning, and illusion. After their first hundred years or so, they’re able to shift into a human form, and then they often tend to live among humans.”

Sokka takes a moment to absorb all of that information. The power over fire definitely aligns with what he had seen the spirit in the shrine do the previous day. He must be over a hundred years old, since he was definitely in human form.

“Do they still have their tails and ears and stuff when they’re in human form? Wouldn’t that make it easy to spot them in villages and towns?”

Aang raises an eyebrow. “Usually they keep their tails hidden through their power over illusion,” he says. “That way, they’re much harder to spot unless a distraction or surprise forces them to lose hold over their form.”

The spirit hadn’t _seemed_ that surprised or distracted, but what does Sokka know about spirits? Maybe he was.

“Anyway,” Aang continues. “Their power is held in their _hoshi no tama,_ which is a physical manifestation of their spirit. In human form, they tend to wear them in an amulet around their necks so that they don’t lose it. They could die if separated from their soul for too long.”

Sokka had been far too busy staring at the spirit’s teeth to look at what was sitting around it’s neck. He has no idea if he’d seen an amulet or not.

“The tails are a symbol of their power, right?” Sokka asks.

“Yes. The more tails, the more power and the older a spirit is. When they gain their ninth tail, they turn pure white and become more powerful than any of us humans could imagine, directly serving Inari.”

At least a century old, probably more, and likely very powerful, Sokka mentally surmises. He feels lucky that he didn’t get turned to ash before even having the chance to leave.

“And what about shrines in the area?” Sokka changes the subject. “We don’t have any to Inari, do we?”

“No,” Aang says. “A small one was supposedly built about a decade ago, but it mysteriously caught fire the night it was completed. The village never attempted to build another.”

Sokka has the creeping feeling that he knows what was responsible for the fire.

“We have plenty of other shrines for other gods and goddesses in the area, though,” Aang supplies. “Did you want to hear about any of them?”

“No,” Sokka says. “I was mostly wondering about shrines that kitsune might reside in. If there ever was one around.”

Aang hesitates. “Sokka, did you meet a kitsune?”

Sokka starts, and then waves his arms wildly in dismissal. “No, of course not! I was just wondering. Just lots of questions. Love knowledge. And foxes. And knowledge about foxes?” He can feel his cheeks heat up with how terrible his lies are.

“I see,” Aang says.

“Exactly,” Sokka nods eagerly. “But—you know, just for the sake of knowledge—if I were to visit a kitsune in an abandoned shrine, what should I do to make sure it doesn’t kill me?”

“For the sake of knowledge,” Aang echoes.

“Exactly.”

Aang miraculously doesn’t call him out. “Make sure you keep your manners. Bow, be humble, and offer it gifts. They love fried tofu, actually. It’s one of their favorite dishes. I would recommend bringing it a plate of as much as you can.”

“Fried tofu,” Sokka repeats. “All right. Thanks for your help, Aang. I really appreciate it.”

Aang nods and waves as Sokka rises to his feet. “Of course,” he says. “Anytime, feel free to come by. Your sister is welcome, too.”

“I’ll make sure she knows,” Sokka says as he leaves.

He squares his shoulders, taking a deep breath as he heads towards the docks near the lake. Time for him to get started with the day. Katara probably won’t forgive him returning home with nothing twice.

He’s out until dusk on the lake with his fishing equipment. He forces himself to stay quiet as he works, doing his best to make up for the previous day’s failures. In the end, he manages to make a far better haul than he had expected. He has fantastic luck, and ends up with enough fish that he feels comfortable trading one in the evening market for the tofu that he’s already decided he needs.

Katara is pleased with him when she arrives home—later than he does since the irrigation is still going poorly—and they’re finally able to have something with dinner other than rice. Katara cooks the fish along with the tofu at Sokka’s request.

“What are you going to do with this?” she asks as she wraps it in cloth for him.

“It’ll be my meal tomorrow,” he hedges. “I was just _really_ craving it.”

He realizes later that this means he’ll go hungry tomorrow, but it’s worth it to not have to explain that he plans on confronting a kitsune that has already threatened to kill him.

“All right,” she acquiesces. “Just make sure you don’t lose it or drop it or something.”

“I won’t!”

Thankfully, that’s the end of it. The following day, Sokka wakes up determined.


	2. The Fog and Flame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He tries not to stare, but it’s difficult not to watch as Zuko tears into the soft tofu with sharp teeth. His ears aren’t laying back across his head anymore, and the orange and black fur is very eye-catching. His hair is longer than Sokka could ever afford to maintain, down to his waist and still somehow manages to look silky and smooth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes it's been a while and I'm so sorry, but I'm back on break after finishing my semester so I can write again! Here goes; please let me know if you enjoy!

He heads out early enough in the morning that the sky is still mostly grey. Usually he wouldn’t ever manage to wake up so early, but his anxiety over seeing the spirit again has him waking up only a few hours after he falls asleep.

The early hours do lend to his advantage, since waking up at dawn means that he can head out and into the forest before Katara questions him on what he’s doing today. He’ll have help her out on the fields as soon as he’s done to make up for sneaking out in the morning.

Assuming that the spirit doesn’t burn him to a crisp before he makes it back.

As he enters the forest, he clutches the wrapped bowl of fried tofu. He hopes that he doesn’t end up wandering the woods in search of the shrine, that he can find it safely. If something goes terribly wrong, he could end up taken by spirits before he ever gets there. Even worse, he can’t help but wonder if maybe he had imagined the whole thing. It had seemed so surreal.

Light filters through the trees as he walks along the lightly-trodden path that most people in the village use when gathering or hunting. It’s always been too dangerous to stray far from it.

Which is, of course, how no one seems to have any knowledge of an abandoned shrine less than an hour’s walk from their village. Soon enough, he gets to the point in the trail where he’ll have to step off of it and walk into less familiar woods. He hopes he’s in the right spot—he’s always been fairly good at navigating, but getting lost yesterday has made him nervous.

Still, he won’t ever get back to the spirit if he doesn’t leave the safety of the path, so he takes a breath and steps into the forest. It’s immediately a bit harder to walk; there’s no trail anymore, so picking his way through the undergrowth is more difficult. He walks in his best approximation of the direction of the shrine that he can guess, trying to look out for small landmarks that he remembers from his trip back a few days ago.

His sense of direction isn’t wrong. Almost exactly when he starts wondering when he’ll run into it, he catches sight of the vermillion _torii_ gates through the trees. He strides towards them with renewed energy and confidence in his steps.

The fox statues on either side of the _torii_ seem to hold more significance than the first time he was here. Maybe he’s imagining it, but this time they give him the distinct feeling of being watched. He’s nervous as he bows and walks through the gate, half-afraid that the spirit will cut him down as soon as he walks onto the shrine’s property.

He traces the same steps as last time, picking his way along the unkempt path and toward the _haiden_. He enters after a moment of wavering at the front steps leading up to it. It’s just as empty and run-down as it had been on his first visit.

He doesn’t know why he had expected it to be different. Perhaps because he now knows that there is a spirit living here, he thought it would be nicer—but it’s not. It’s all just falling apart.

Once he’s in the main hall of the shrine, he doesn’t know what to do. If his guess is correct, the spirit is living in the _honden_ , but he doesn’t want to intrude on sacred space now that he’s aware of a spirit who lives in the area. The hall, however, is so ransacked that there isn’t really any place for him to put his tofu offering.

He bites his lip and decides to just sit where he is, sinking to his knees in the middle of the dirt-covered floor and holding the offering on his lap. Katara will kill him later for dirtying his kotatsu like this.

“Spirit,” Sokka calls out slowly, feeling a little stupid, “I have brought you an offering. You know, if you want it. A friend of mine said that you like fried tofu?”

As he speaks, he gains a little bit of confidence.

“Anyway, I went fishing yesterday, and I had enough luck to buy some good tofu for you. My sister helped me prepare it, so I promise that it will be pretty good. I know you said to leave yesterday, but I felt bad for just barging in so I figured that I could come back with an apology offering, or something, and—”

“If you feel bad for barging in the first time, then why did you do it again?”

It’s the same voice as last time, gravely and colored with irritation. Sokka looks behind him to see the fox spirit at the entrance to the _haiden_ , his arms crossed and a scowl etched onto his features. He’s just as beautifully terrifying as the last time, his ears pinned back in irritation and his tails flared out behind him.

Sokka realizes the spirit is waiting for an answer to his question. “Well, I brought you food,” he says, feeling awkward as he holds out the wrapped offering. “And I was curious, I guess. I wanted to learn more about this place.”

He holds his breath, knowing that this will be the moment where his brashness will either be accepted or become the death of him. For a long moment, the kitsune eyes him in silence.

Finally, his arms uncross, and he gestures towards one of the _shoji_ screens. “In here.”

He slides it open to and enters without looking to see Sokka scramble awkwardly to his feet. Sokka enters to a much less destroyed side room; the walls are still torn and buckling, and nature is still growing through the floorboards, but there is a low table that the spirit is already sitting at. Sokka sits across from him.

For a moment, there is just silence as the spirit stares at him, golden eyes piercing.

Finally, he holds out a clawed hand.

“What?” Sokka asks, voice pitched.

“The food,” the spirit says. He sounds completely unaffected, and Sokka thinks it’s a little unfair that he’s the only one who seems so out of his element.

“Oh, right.” Sokka hurriedly hands over the small bundle. “I hope it’s to your liking, kitsune.”

The spirit takes the tofu and unwraps it delicately, minding his claws so they don’t catch on the cloth. Sokka can see the moment that he realizes the tofu is good—he takes a bite, and his eyes widen almost imperceptibly. He takes another shortly after.

“You may call me Zuko,” the kitsune tells him after he finishes the first piece. “So as to not just refer to me as kitsune.”

“I’m Sokka.” It would probably be rude not to offer the kitsune—Zuko—his own name in return.

He tries not to stare, but it’s difficult not to watch as Zuko tears into the soft tofu with sharp teeth. His ears aren’t laying back across his head anymore, and the orange and black fur is very eye-catching. His hair is longer than Sokka could ever afford to maintain, down to his waist and still somehow manages to look silky and smooth.

Maybe it’s just part of spirit magic, to be able to look beautiful all the time. Still, if it was, why would he have such a nasty scar over the left side of his face?

“As thanks for the food, you may ask questions while I eat.” Zuko’s voice interrupts his thoughts.

He’s suddenly scrambling for questions. He has so many, and this must be the chance of a lifetime—how many people really get the chance to ask a spirit questions? Would there be any that are off limits? Sokka has no idea.

Naturally, he blurts out the first thing to come to mind.

“What happened to this shrine? Why doesn’t anyone know that it exists?”

Zuko sits back for a moment as he chews, an ear flicking while he thinks. “Do you know any of your town’s history?”

Sokka shakes his head. “Not more than the stories passed down, I guess. We are a small town that’s based on rice production and fishing and the like. I thought we’ve always been this way.”

Zuko laughs and shakes his head. “No. This town was once far more prosperous than it is now Many years ago—some two hundred, if my sense of time hasn’t left me entirely, but it might have been less or more—it was around fifty times its current size. This shrine was an integral part of the town, since you humans were so reliant on rice.”

He holds out his hand and lights a flame, with a breath and an exhale, the flames increase in size, and then start to take on shapes—a figure of a kitsune with seven tails.

“My father lived here in this shrine, alongside my sister and I.”

Two more figures formed, both with only a single tail, and much smaller. Sokka watches as the figures move through the flame, entranced by the flickering heat.

“When I first came into existence, my father had only five tails. Foxes gain tails through two combined means—power, and longevity. Years beget wisdom, which allows for more tails. Similarly, growth of power can do the same. My father had no patience to wait years.”

His father’s flames grow redder, but somehow the heat emanating from him grows hotter. Sokka shies back as the figure of the kitsune grows in size until it envelops the figures of the two children, eyes wide.

“He began to prey on the town.”

Zuko closes his hand and the flames go out. Immediately, the room is plunged into a cool darkness. Fog rolls into the room at Zuko’s next gesture, coalescing beside the table at their feet. It shimmers, and suddenly Sokka can see the village through the fog. It’s not quite the same, though—bigger, different, older. It’s what the village must have looked like in Zuko’s memory, back before it became how it currently is.

“He drove people away. He stole from humans who already had nothing. He invited cruel spirits into the surrounding forests, and they slowly choked the humans out.”

As Zuko narrates, the small houses in Sokka’s view of the village begin to wink out of existence in the fog, replaced by a swirling darkness that makes his heart hammer. Shadows flick through the images of trees, and the village slowly disappears, reduced to nothing but a shadow of what it had once been.

The fog dissipates as well.

“When the harvests began to fail, the humans first visited this shrine with more vigor, praying for help. When my father only increased their suffering, they abandoned it entirely. In his rage, he cursed the village and left. It’s why you are now stagnant, never growing, never gaining more than what is barely enough to keep you alive.”

Abruptly, Zuko stops, picking up another piece of tofu and taking a bite of it. He’s almost finished with the plate by now. Sokka hadn’t even seen him eating while the story was being told, too entranced in the movement of the flames and the fog to pay attention to Zuko’s pauses.

Sokka waits for a moment, but it quickly becomes clear that Zuko is done speaking.

“Really?” Sokka isn’t proud of his incredulity, but he almost can’t believe that everything Zuko said was actually real.

Zuko glares at him, and the expression makes Sokka gulp. “You asked, I answered. Don’t ask questions of me if you aren’t going to even believe the answers that I give you.”

“I’m sorry, kits—Zuko. I believe you. It’s just a lot to take in.”

Zuko sighs, seemingly irritated, but just picks up the second to last piece of tofu without actually doing anything about it. “Do you have any other questions? I will answer one other.”

Sokka quickly racks his brains, trying to pick out a good question. Despite Zuko’s rather thorough answer, the holes that he did leave in the story caused another thousand new questions to pop up in his head. He’s even more unsure of what to ask than he was the first time. Then again, asking the first question that came to mind worked out fairly well for him before.

“Why didn’t you skip town with your father and sister when they left?”

Instantly, Zuko’s lips curl, and Sokka catches a flash of fangs. “Ask a different question,” he snaps.

“Okay,” Sokka agrees quickly, not wanting to test that kind of expression. “How about your face? Don’t kitsune choose their human form? Why would you choose to look like that?”

This time, Zuko’s growl is audible, and his voice is raised. “Not that question, either! Don’t be rude with your questions, or you won’t like the consequences!”

“Wait, but you never told me what kind of questions I couldn’t ask,” Sokka complains without thinking. “You can’t give me permission to ask questions and then yell at me when I do.”

Zuko rises to his feet, and he towers over Sokka as he glares down at him.

“You are here only because I allow you to be, human,” Zuko growls, leaning down to point a clawed finger at Sokka’s chest. “Your questions offend me, and I won’t answer any that I find intolerable. Now _leave me,_ and this time let me make it clear that you will not be welcome back! I will burn the next person to arrive here, offerings or not. _Out!_ ”

His voice has risen to a roar by the time he shouts the last word, pointing towards the entrance to the shrine. Sokka scrambles backwards, feet catching on the edge of his _hakama_ before he finds purchase on the flooring and manages to make it upright. Zuko is seething with anger, looking to be only moments away from striking out at Sokka and ending him before he makes it out of the shrine.

Sokka once again is forced to flee from the old shrine, terrified from his life.

He fears that this time he won’t be able to return.

* * *

He does his best to forget about the events of the morning when he stumbles out to the rice fields to work with Katara and the other villagers. He spends his time participating in gossip, catching up on the things he’s missed while he was out working elsewhere and consumed by his own thoughts.

He’s absolutely starving by the time they’re done working for the day. He doesn’t regret giving his food to the spirit, especially because of the answers he got in return, but he really is hungry. More hungry than he usually is, at least.

That night, Katara frowns at him over their dinner—there’s fish this time, thanks to what Sokka had caught the day before—and asks him what he’s been up to.

“You’ve been weirdly secretive the past couple of days,” she points out. “Usually you’re always talking during dinner, but you haven’t, lately. It’s not like you.”

Sokka pokes at his fish with his chopsticks, wondering how much he should actually say. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s been visiting a kitsune that threatened to murder him more than once. Especially because Katara would probably demand to see Zuko, and Sokka _definitely_ can’t go back now.

He remembers the terrifying anger in Zuko’s eyes, and he knows that he can’t risk it again.

“I found something weird in the woods on the day that I got lost,” Sokka decides to admit. “An old, abandoned shrine.”

“And you’ve just been obsessing over it for a week?”

Sokka shrugs and stuffs a chunk of fish in his mouth. “I tried to go back to it this morning. I couldn’t find it.”

Katara reaches across the table and smacks his hands. “Don’t eat right before you start talking, Sokka.”

“Sorry.”

“Wait. You went _back_ to keep looking for the shrine? In the dangerous part of the forest? Are you _insane?_ What if you hadn’t come back? What would I have done?” Katara slams her own chopsticks down. “Think of your safety next time you do something so dumb!”

Sokka gets why she’s mad. He does—it was really stupid of him to go back into the forest, but he knew the way. He didn’t get lost, and he ended up being completely fine. Still, it’s best not to argue with his sister.

“Sorry,” he says, shrugging. “I didn’t find it anyway, so I won’t be going back.”

It’s mostly the truth. He certainly won’t be going back anymore.

He forces himself to put his conversation with Zuko out of his mind during the next several days. Instead, he makes sure to work like he should be, throwing himself into the rice farms and clearing out the irrigation issues that they’re still having. Their harvest probably won’t be the best this year—as always.

Unfortunately, at night, when he’s trying to sleep, he can’t help but think about their conversation. Especially since it has to be the source of their problem, isn’t it? The curse that Zuko had mentioned, the way they can barely ever get a sufficient harvest; it’s surely connected.

He spends his nights wondering if he’s the only one who knows their village’s history, now. The village elders have never spoken of it, and while common gossip likes to joke that the village is cursed, no one truly wants to believe something so depressing. The people want to keep trying, with faith that the gods will eventually deliver them the plentiful harvest and break that they work for.

He considers going to talk with Aang about the shrine and his visit again, but he doesn’t think he could get away with talking to him without mentioning Zuko being a kitsune. He doesn’t want to do that. On a higher level, he knows that it would be dangerous to let anyone know about the kitsune living in a shrine not far from the village.

But if Sokka really admits it to himself, he just doesn’t want to tell anyone about Zuko.

His magic was incredible. He remembers Aang having mentioned powers over fire and illusion, but he hadn’t expected to witness something so amazing firsthand. The way the flames formed shape at Zuko’s will, the rolling fog and the images within—it was entrancing.

Five days pass like this, where Sokka is consumed with thoughts of the kitsune he saw while trying not to be. He manages to keep it from his sister; that, or she decides to grant him peace and doesn’t mention it. It bothers him that he can’t let it go.

He feels quite stupid about it, but it is what it is.

The fifth night is the night that the pattern changes. He goes to bed as always, laying down on his futon and letting himself splay out as he always does—he’s never been a very neat sleeper. Before he can pass out, however, his eye catches sight of a bobbing light just outside the _shoji_ screen separating him from outside.

For a moment, he thinks it’s just his imagination, but then the flickering light grows in strength. It looks almost like a flame through the screen and Sokka forces himself to sit up. He doesn’t want to wake his sister unless it’s actually an emergency, so he just slides on his sandals and slips outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment or kudos if you're looking forward to where this goes c:
> 
> Twitter: [teaszuko](https://twitter.com/teaszuko)

**Author's Note:**

> There's been hours and hours of research that went into this fic, but please let me know if anything came across wrong or incorrect!
> 
> Twitter: [teaszuko](https://twitter.com/teaszuko)
> 
> Please leave a kudos and a comment if you enjoyed it!


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